Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘So far, my visit to Harding’s had yielded more than I had any right to expect. But this was not all. My man came at length to that stage of the proceedings at which it is usual for the barber to hint delicately that the condition of one’s scalp is not all that could be wished, and that this could be remedied by the use of some sort of hair-wash. With a flash of inspiration, I asked what Weaver was in the habit of buying for himself. The best hair-tonic there is, said my barber with enthusiasm; Harding’s own preparation, Capillax—just the thing for me; and I would understand that Weaver knew, as a hairdresser, how excellent it was. I thought, when I was told the price of it, that Weaver also knew how impressively costly it was. I was shown a bottle of Capillax; a green, fluted bottle, with NOT TO BE TAKEN stamped in the glass. Why, I asked my barber, should I be forbidden to take Capillax, if I should choose to buy Capillax?

  ‘He turned the bottle over, and showed me on the back a tiny pasted label. It read:

  This preparation, containing among other

  valuable ingredients a small amount of

  Chloroform, is in accordance with the

  Pharmacy Act hereby labelled POISON.

  ‘I ordered a bottle, of course. I thought my barber had earned his commission on the sale. And I asked him if he could tell me why chloroform should be used in a tonic for the hair, because I had thought it was for putting people to sleep. He said, yes, but that was only the vapour of chloroform; in solution it acted as a stimulant to the skin, and had cleansing properites.

  ‘My reconstruction of this crime is that Weaver planned the murder of Hermon. He had found out something that Maxwell did not dare have known about himself; he put the screw on him and bled him for every shilling he could raise. A servant who knows too much about his employer is a figure common enough in the odorous annals of blackmail. Weaver had “come into money” indeed! Probably he got rid of a lot of it by betting. Anyhow, the more he got, the more he wanted. He had tasted easy money; he could not do without it; and there was no more in sight. But he knew that Maxwell, when his uncle died, would be a rich man. Weaver thought it over; and he formed a plan, to be carried out the first time that opportunity offered.

  ‘On the morning of Hermon’s death Maxwell heard, by letter or telephone, that his uncle intended to call that afternoon. Weaver’s tale, that the old man had given no notice of his coming, was hardly credible. It was the height of summer, and it was utterly unlikely that Maxwell would be staying indoors that afternoon unless he was expecting a visitor. Hermon would certainly have let him know he was coming. This was what Weaver had been waiting for. After lunch he told Maxwell to leave the flat, go somewhere where he could mix with friends, and stay away until dinnertime. I do not believe Maxwell knew what was intended, because Haggett’s story makes it plain that he protested against this. He did not see why he should deliberately absent himself when his uncle had asked him to be at home; why should he affront the old man? Weaver then went to the door of the flat, and as he opened it he raised his voice in the bullying words that Haggett caught as the lift went down. Maxwell, in a furious temper, did as he was told.

  ‘When Hermon arrived, coming up by the lift, Weaver opened the door to him. He framed some lie to account for Maxwell’s absence, and asked him to come in, perhaps for a rest and a cup of tea. Hermon did so; and while he was alone in the sitting-room, Weaver slipped out, took the lift to the floor above, and forced the lift gate on Maxwell’s floor. When the old man went, Weaver saw him to the lift, opened the gate, and thrust him into the empty shaft. He knew better than most people how bad Hermon’s sight was, and how little strength he had for a struggle. And here the plan went wrong. Hermon realized at the last instant that the lift was not there, and grabbed at Weaver as he felt the push given him. His right hand clutched Weaver’s hair, tearing some of it out as he fell to his death, and lacerating the man’s scalp.

  ‘Weaver had seen instantly that if hair was found in the dead man’s hand there would be an end of the theory that he had met with an accident. The police would be looking for a man with black hair and a scratched head; and they would not have far to look. There was only one thing for it. Weaver ran down to the ground floor, forced the gate there, stepped into the well, and carefully removed the hair he found in the dead man’s grasp. There was nothing else he could do. He must simply stick to the story he had already made up, and trust to luck. After all, as far as he knew, there had been no witness whatever to anything that had passed.’

  It was late by the time Trent had finished his memorandum. He read and reread it; then slipped it into an envelope, addressed it to Mr Bligh at Scotland Yard, went out and registered it at the district post office.

  Trent was at work in his studio next morning when the telephone bell called him.

  Mr Bligh, not an effusive man by nature, said that Trent’s report had reached him. ‘There’s no doubt but what you’re right,’ he went on. ‘It’s a pity, though, that we shall never hear what it was Weaver knew about Maxwell. It might very well have been a job for us.’

  ‘Well, you called him a vicious young brute,’ Trent said. ‘With my morbid imagination and your fund of horrid experience, we ought to be able to guess a few of the things that it might have been. But why do you say you will never know? If you bring the murder home to Weaver, he will probably give Maxwell away, having no further use for his secret. It would be just like him.’

  ‘Weaver won’t do that.’ There was a note of grimness in the inspector’s voice. ‘At 8:15 last night Weaver was on his way down Coventry Street. He had been drinking, and couldn’t walk straight. A dozen people saw him stumble off the kerb and into the road, right under a passing bus. He was killed instantly. His injuries—’

  ‘Thanks, I don’t want to hear about his injuries.’ Trent wiped his brow. ‘They were fatal—that’s enough for me.’

  ‘Yes, but there were some that weren’t fatal. On the head, concealed by the hair, there were four deep scratches, not completely healed, and the signs of some hair having been torn out by the roots. I thought you’d like to know.’

  VII

  THE OLD-FASHIONED APACHE

  WHEN Dr Francis Howland was attacked and left for dead in Stark Wood, near his house at Wargate, none of his many friends could imagine an explanation of the apparently motiveless crime. Among them was Sir James Molloy, editor of that powerful morning newspaper the Record, who often made one of the little company that welcomed Dr Howland whenever he appeared at the Russell Club; and it was at Sir James’s request that Philip Trent went down to Wargate next day ‘to see what he could make of the mystery’ for Sir James’s paper.

  Trent, once on the spot, could make little enough of it at the outset; and the police, so far as he could discover, were equally at a loss. But he was able to add to the few bare facts reported in the first accounts of the crime, and to supply from his own knowledge, as Sir James had suggested, some details of the victim’s unusual career. Sitting in his room at the Packhorse and Talbot Inn, he drew up a dispatch to reach London by train that evening.

  ‘Dr Howland (he wrote) has lived for some two years in this charming corner of Sussex at his little house Fairfield, his establishment consisting of a secretary, a housekeeper, and a domestic servant. Fairfield lies on the outskirts of Wargate village, and it has been his habit to take an hour’s walk, usually alone, each evening before dinner in the surrounding country. Yesterday (Sunday) he went out as usual about 5:30.

  ‘At about 6:15 Mr Derek Scotson, walking on the main road from Wargate to Bridlemere with his spaniel, heard the dog barking excitedly behind him, and turning back he was guided by the sound to a spot, not far from the road, in Stark Wood, which lies to the left of it. He found the dog standing by a man’s body, lying prone on the footpath, but with the right side of the face visible; and he at once recognized Dr Howland, who was well known to him. He could see that the back of the head was terribly injured, and at first he believed that Dr Howland was dead; but a movement of
the features told him that it was not so, and Mr Scotson, ordering his dog to stand guard over the victim, hurried off to the roadside telephone-box which he knew to be not far away.

  ‘He rang up the police in Bridlemere, reporting the facts and asking them to send a doctor, as there is none living in Wargate; then rang up Dr Howland’s, intending to ask that Mr Gemmell, the secretary, should bring first-aid equipment to Stark Wood immediately. Neither Mr Gemmell nor the maid, however, was in the house at the time, and the housekeeper, who is very deaf, did not hear the bell. Mr Scotson had therefore to leave the unconscious man still in charge of his dog while he stood at the roadside to halt the police car when it should arrive. Fortunately it was soon on the spot, accompanied by a motor-ambulance. The doctor, after attending to the wounded man, removed him to the cottage hospital at Bridlemere, while the police, in the now failing light, made such beginning as they could in the search for traces.

  ‘Dr Howland’s injuries were found to be serious enough, though probably not fatal. He had been struck more than once on the back of the head with some heavy weapon, possibly an iron bar, and at 4 p.m. today he was still unconscious. Detective-Inspector Clymer, continuing his investigation this morning, found a number of footprints in the damp soil of the path. He formed the opinion that Dr Howland had been followed into the wood from the open field beyond it by his assailant, who had afterwards gone off at a run by the way he came. It seems likely that Dr Howland owes his life to Mr Scotson’s dog, whose barking may well have frightened off the ruffian before his brutal work was done.

  ‘From my own knowledge I may recall some leading facts about the career of Dr Howland, which is better known to the French public than to his countrymen. Before his retirement, he had for many years a remarkable place in the legal world. He was born and brought up in Paris, where his father was the correspondent of an important newspaper. He was educated in England. At Oxford he studied law with brilliant success, and took, later, his doctorate in that school. After being called to the Bar, he returned to Paris, where he qualified as an advocate, and built up a practice among British subjects engaged in litigation, or faced with prosecution, in the French courts. This was soon extended to other foreigners in Paris; for Dr Howland was a notable linguist, having mastered half a dozen continental tongues with extraordinary facility, and speaking them as readily as English and French. It was said of him (untruly) that if a client applied to him whose language he did not know, Dr Howland would make an appointment with him for the following day, by which time he would be ready to discuss his case with him fluently and idiomatically in his own native speech.

  ‘In this corner of his profession the doctor made for himself a unique and very profitable place. He was best known to the public as a defender of accused persons, and as the deadliest cross-examiner of his day. At the same time he had won distinction among legal scholars with a few volumes on comparative jurisprudence. When I was living in Paris I met Dr Howland more than once, and was struck by the gravely handsome presence and splendid voice which were so effective in the French tribunals.

  ‘Dr Howland had certainly made at least a moderate fortune at the French Bar, but much of it, according to rumour, had been sunk for ever in the financing of a new health resort in the Puy-de-Dôme which came to nothing. Then one day an aunt of the King of Annam, in French Indo-China, was accused by a mandarin, her enemy, of attempting to poison M. de Choiselle, the Resident-Superior, and Dr Howland was offered an enormous fee by the king to leave his practice and go out to defend the lady. He spent six months in Hué, routed a dozen bought witnesses, saved his client, and at once decided to retire on his gains and settle down in England.

  ‘So he came to Wargate, an elderly bachelor in easy circumstances. There he has lived in scholarly peace, working at another book, entertaining a few friends, and running up frequently to town for luncheon at the Russell Club, where his wit and his fund of curious experience have made him the centre of an admiring circle. No man could be more liked and respected, and his being made the subject of a murderous attack has been heard of with no less amazement than concern.’

  At breakfast next morning Trent had the coffee-room to himself. As he was filling a pipe he heard a car draw up at the inn, and presently Inspector Clymer, whose acquaintance Trent had already made, ushered in to him a slim, hard-looking man who, Trent decided privately, would be at his best on horseback in a weather-beaten scarlet coat. After this personage came young Mr Gemmell, Dr Howland’s secretary, with whom also Trent had had some talk the day before.

  ‘Can I have a word with you, Mr Trent?’ the slim man said. ‘My name’s Hildebrand—Captain Hildebrand—Chief Constable in these parts.’

  Trent, who asked nothing better than this, said he would be glad if he could be of any use, and drew out chairs for Captain Hildebrand and the two others.

  ‘Well, you may be of more use than any of us are, as it happens,’ the captain said, biting off the end of a cigar. ‘You understand our work, I know, and it seems you have lived in Paris and knew something of Dr Howland. I read that article with your name at the top of it in the paper this morning.’

  ‘What is the news of the old gentleman?’ Trent asked.

  ‘Pretty good. They feel sure now that he’ll get over it. I saw him last night. He was getting his wits back, and I think he knew me. Well now, I made this an early call, because I wanted to be sure of finding you, and I picked up Mr Gemmell on my way, thinking he might be able to throw some light on the subject. I’ll tell you what it is. When Inspector Clymer was going over the ground yesterday, he found two bits of paper, pieces of a torn-up letter, lying near the footpath through Stark Wood and close to where you come into it from the field—that’s to say about thirty yards from where the doctor was found. Is that right, Clymer?’

  ‘That’s the measurement I made,’ said the inspector.

  ‘Now, what is written on these pieces of paper seems to be in some sort of French. I can read French pretty well, and I’ve shown them to one of my superintendents who knows the language thoroughly, and neither of us can make head or tail of some of it. I’ve got them here, and I should like to hear what you think about it.’

  Captain Hildebrand produced from his pocket a letter-case, and extracted from it two battered scraps of notepaper which he handed to Trent. They bore a few lines written in a sprawling but sufficiently legible hand.

  Trent frowned over the sordid-looking scrawl for a few minutes. He held the bits of paper up to the light, while Captain Hildebrand and the inspector exchanged significant glances.

  ‘There are some curious points about all this,’ Trent said at last. ‘Whoever wrote it knew French well enough—’

  ‘Damned queer French too,’ the captain interjected.

  ‘Almost too queer,’ Trent agreed. ‘But what I was saying is that he didn’t know it thoroughly. You see this about some date in October falling on a Sunday—possibly that refers to the day of the crime, Sunday the fourteenth. Well, I can’t see any Frenchman writing, or saying, “tombe sur un dimanche”. He would write “tombe un dimanche”—that is the universal idiom, as far as I know. I doubt if this man is a Frenchman at all.’

  ‘Ha!’ the captain exclaimed. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. What else?’

  ‘The puzzling words here’—Trent laid the scraps on the table—‘are queer French, as you say. They belong to a sort of thieves’ patter, the same sort of thing as the old back-slang in the English underworld—only not so simple. You take a word, cut off the first letter and stick it onto the end, then put an L at the beginning, and finish off the job by tacking on the final syllable “eme.” Louchébème, it’s called—because the butchers of the Paris abattoirs invented it before the apaches took it up. You see: bouchér—ouchéb—louchéb—louchèbème.’

  ‘Golly, what a lingo!’ Captain Hildebrand observed. He was keenly interested. The inspector’s face expressed a certain bewilderment; Mr Gemmell’s nothing whatever. ‘Well then, what about “l
aufème” and “lieuvème”? I don’t seem to get it.’

  ‘Why, that’s another point, and an important one. You see, louchébème was a spoken secret language; it was meant to keep anybody guessing who heard you talking about your private affairs—not for letter-writing. That being so, any silent letters would be dropped out. Well then, “laufème” gives you “fau” and “lieuvème” gives you “vieu”.’

  Captain Hildebrand bent over the writing. ‘Yes, of course—“vieu” is “vieux”, the old man. We’re getting on! But what do you make of “fau”, then? Oh yes, I see! He must have written, “Vous something-or-other ce qu’il faut.” It would be, “You know what is necessary,” I dare say.’

  ‘Yes, probably. But what is odd about all this is that it’s a good many years since I lived in Paris, and learnt about louchébème. Half my friends there knew about it too. We used to use louchébème words for fun. And of course that meant that the crooks had given it up; a slang that everybody understands is no good to them. I did hear, in fact, that they had got another called javanais; and the mere fact that I heard of it probably meant that it was already disused. So you see how strange it all is—a man apparently trying to write like a French crook, and not, I think, succeeding.

  ‘You see the same thing in that word “flambeau”. He seems to have written “Voici le flambeau”. That used to be thieves’ slang for “This is the affair”, or “the business”—I’ve come across it in novels as old as Les Misérables, as old as Dickens. It’s like a modern English crook talking about “cly-faking”, or calling the police “slops”. And you can say the same about the word “suer”. If he wrote “faire suer le lieuvème”—make the old man sweat—it would mean in slang of the Bill Sikes vintage “kill the old man”. Which somebody tried to do. There you are, Captain Hildebrand.’ Trent handed the pieces of paper to him. ‘I’m sure I hope you enjoy hearing lectures.’